Goodbye
by Won'tSayI'mInLove
Summary: She glared down at the small girl. "You must understand...a parent can hate their own child...and surely you've found the answer on your own? Father...could never...love you..." before PRIVATE by Kate Brian


**A/N: This is about Noelle, moving to Easton Academy. She's like ten years old. She's unpopular in her old home, FYI. Yeah. Wow, unpopular Noelle Lange? Whoa. (This is a Fanfic of "Private" by Kate Brian. It's in miscellaneous because I said so.)**

_So what would you say  
if I told you I'm leaving today?  
__Why do I doubt that you'd ever miss me,  
but trust you to walk away?_

_So this is for you,  
and your faked tears.  
It's about time that I set fire to  
all those wasted years._

_While you sit there,  
feigning sorrow,  
I'll be leaving,  
__I'll be gone by tomorrow._

_Would you notice?_

Noelle Lange glared out at the cold sheets of rain pouring down her car window. She watched the retreating form of her big house, with its wide lawn and circular driveway. She sighed wistfully, staring back as the big iron gates shut.

Whoever said goodbye is never forever spent way too much time hiding in their room pretending to be wise.

She clutched her tiny Russian Blue kitten close to her chest. The tiny kitten purred and nuzzled into her hand. She sighed, her big brown eyes filled with tears, and watched quietly as everything she'd ever known and loved faded away in the distance.

Including her father.

"Good bye," she whispered, pressing her fingers against the cold glass. "I never meant to leave you, I swear."

000000

_"Well, maybe we should get a divorce! You're not happy, and I sure as all hell am not!"_

Noelle cradled her tiny kitten closer, eyes squished shut to fight tears. The voice kept ringing in her ears. That night, she'd sworn that it was just the TV, turned up way to loud, but here in the back of the car, she could no longer deny the truth. Her distant father, her irritable mother...

Tears started to blur her vision. No way. Noelle Lange didn't cry, unless it was extremely emotional.

Surely this doesn't count?

But she kept thinking back to just last week. Her family had gone to a zoo, and her parents had fought over whether the polar bears were indeed white, or if their fur had tints of green. They went to a museum, and her parents fought over whether a painting was a Monet or a Picasso. They went to a breeder to pick out a kitten for Noelle, and they'd fought over whether or not three thousand was too much to pay for her kitten. Then, they fought over which kitten she was going to get.

Why had she found their divorce shocking?

Maybe because, deep inside her ten-year-old heart, she was still clinging to the idea of a happy stay-at-home mother, a successful lawyer father, and the beautiful model daughter. The idea of the perfect family. She still held tight to the childish belief that you could love someone forever. That, once you married someone, life became perfect and beautiful and flawless, and you would never fight, or be angry with each other. It would never happen. The mother would never scream, the father could never hate the adorable little daughter, nothing would go wrong. Nothing, ever.

Divorce? How would her tiny mind comprehend that? It went against the image of her life, her culture, that she'd learned.

Yet here she was, clutching a guilt gift from her father and in the back of the black chauffeured Range Rover with her mother in the front, with nothing but a broken heart and a mewing kitten to show for it. Tears welled up in her eyes even more. How had life gotten so hard? Since when did her fairytale, "happily-ever-after" parents fight?

Noelle put a hand against the glass. She stared out at the sky. It seemed to match her mood: dark, cloudy, starless, with the moon being smothered by thick grey clouds. There was no light outside, other than the red backlights on the few cars traveling around her. They looked like fire. She wished one of the many fires outside would come and swallow her.

She'd been unpopular back home, what would it look like to her new classmates? There were probably rumors flying around the school already. What would they think? They'd probably hate her.

_You must understand that a parent can hate their own child. You can tell, surely, by how he acts. Father doesn't love you…not at all…_

Noelle's eyes were big with tears. Words she'd heard from her shows, from her own life even, flashed through her mind.

_Not…at…all…_

She tried to blink away tears, but it wouldn't work. Her eyes kept coming up with newer, bigger tears that threatened to spill over if she let herself think.

_You're being ridiculous_, she scolded herself, trying not to let the tears splash onto her dress._ Father doesn't hate you. Look, you're holding the proof in your arms. _She cradled her tiny blue-grey kitten, stroking her soft fur.

_But at the end of every email…he writes that he loves me…Daddy could never hate me._

Noelle rubbed furiously at her tears. She pictured her father, bent over the computer keyboard while he typed away, writing a message to send to her, while he was away in some exotic location.

_There, see? You've found the answer…on your own._

Noelle's eyes welled up. The tears threatened to flood one last time, and suddenly she surrendered.

_You found the answer all on your own, before anyone tried to convince you._

Tears dotted her kitten's soft fur, but Noelle hardly noticed.

**A/N: The quotes in the final bit are from Skip Beat, volume 3 and 4. I like them, for whatever strangely morbid reason. (: (Oh, yeah, and the first one is from an anonymous source. Its supposed to be Noelle's mom screaming at her dad.)**


End file.
